Luck Begets a Leader?
“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” -Seneca
There are many components to a leader’s development; even more to their effectiveness. Those who emerge as leaders bring a mix of intelligence, insight, initiative, persistence, self-confidence, sociability, and energy. We expect them to demonstrate knowledge and proficiency, an ability to work with and motivate others, and the capacity to encourage new ideas and concepts. But these mere checklists of traits and behaviors can’t fully explain leader effectiveness, which begs the question: what else is needed?
Surprisingly, luck and opportunity play significant and unheralded roles in professional success, as supported with research by cognitive scientist Scott Kaufman. There are several types of luck: luck events, people luck, and just plain bad luck. According to management scholars Jim Collins and Morten Hansen, a luck event is one that occurs almost entirely independent of the individual, has the potential for significantly good or bad results, and is unpredictable in nature. The development of personal computers and the void of the right programs in this advancement was such a luck event to Bill Gates. Gates is undeniably a trailblazing leader in the technical world with ample brilliance and ingenuity. But he also had luck -- Gates was lucky enough to be born into an upper middle-class family that sent him to private school where he learned to program on a teletype connection to a computer, developing a skill that would be critical to his future. Simultaneously, microelectronics were advancing to eventually make the personal computer possible. This is when Gates’s people luck came into the equation.
According to Collins and Hansen, people luck is finding the right mentor, partner, friend or teammate who can assist in the process of effective leadership. Along with Gates’s parents, professors and other supporters, Paul Allen, coincidentally a high school classmate of Gates and software engineer, played a critical role in Gates’s ascent to technical trailblazer. Allen wanted to convert BASIC programming language into a product that could be sold for a personal computer. At the time, Gates was attending Harvard, which had state of the art computers that allowed him to test and develop their ideas. Gates had a variety of “lucky” elements in his life -- from being born into a family who could send him to good schools, to living at the right time when personal computers were merely an idea, to knowing the right people. But, so did others. There were others born to affluent families, others with a high intellect, and others at Harvard at the same time as Gates. There were others who could have been perceived as lucky. Why did Gates surpass his peers?
Gates’s success did not dismiss the import of luck, nor did he rest solely on it. He also demonstrated preparation, persistence and diligence. Further, Gates has intelligence, determination, and energy in pursuit of his goals, acceptance of personal risk in pursuit of his ideas, and the ability to influence the behaviors and actions of others. Gates had the vision to see a problem or an opportunity, such as the need of programming for personal computers.
As noted in the epigraph, Roman philosopher Seneca purportedly said, “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” Someone can be hardworking, or they can be lucky, but either alone will only take them so far. In reality, it was the union of Gates’s openness to luck with his innate personality traits and developed skills that ultimately created a significant return on investment. This combination allowed him to develop into a great leader of the technology world, as well as a philanthropist, investor and inventor. Gates recognized his luck and seized the opportunities it presented.
Italians Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Raspisarda and Alessio Biondo conducted a study that found that mediocre and lucky people were notably more successful than more talented and unlucky people. Again, either talent or luck taken alone is unlikely to yield lasting leader effectiveness. Even if someone holds the entire checklist of “good behaviors” for a leader, being born in the wrong decade, country or not meeting the right people may thwart leadership success. So what is a leader to do?
Energy, initiative and intellect, as well as appropriate skills, are critical ingredients to becoming a leader. When someone with these ingredients also encounters luck, that’s when a truly effective leader emerges. It’s no secret that luck is outside of our control. But exploiting what luck we do have is completely within our grasp. Luck events and people luck present opportunities for those who have a propensity to lead. Realizing when and where you have this good fortune and exploiting those advantages can set you apart from the rest, as with Gates. Bill Gates was just another bright Harvard student when he reconnected with his old friend Paul Allen and began tinkering with new computer programming that changed our technological world. Luck does beget leadership, but not on its own.